Changes are afoot. I wonder why that is, why are they never “ahand” or “aknee”?

Anyway, having received notice that I’m shortly due to renew my hosting account for this site, I’ve decided that now is probably a good a time as any to move my site. I’ve been reasonably pleased with 34sp in the past but having recently used other sites that are running WordPress (PostoftheWeek, One Man Writes), on other hosts I’ve noticed the improvements in speed, and in one case, price.

So, I’ve been quietly preparing to move this blog and implement a few other things whilst I’m at it, but I’m still not 100% sure on how to best implement things and as it’ll impact you, dearest reader, I thought I’d ask for your opinion(s).

Part of this is more to do with sorting out my online identity than about different URLs, but it’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while now, I guess I just needed the push to do it.
Let me backtrack a little first.

I bought the latter domain purely for the sake of completion, and with half a mind to redirect it to this site, but I guess in the back of my head I knew why I wanted to buy it but hadn’t really thought everything through…

Ultimately, the aim is to convert gordonmclean.co.uk (where you are now) to an old-fashioned “homepage”, so if someone searches for me, they’ll land there first, rather than here in my blog. Yes, I know I should’ve thought of all of this a long time ago but I didn’t.

There is another option, although it’s not as clean, and that’s to move the main URL for this blog to a sub-directory e.g. “gordonmclean.co.uk/blog”, and just point onemanblogs.co.uk at that directory.

Either way, whilst I WILL put some redirects in place for a short while, there will come a time when visiting “gordonmclean.co.uk” will no longer bring you to this blog. So, I guess I have to ask the question, which would YOU prefer?

Technically the outcome makes little difference, as moving a blog to a sub-directory still requires me to redirect any incoming links (to old posts for example) to the new location. Mind you, I’ve still to read up on just HOW I handle that but I’ll cross that bridge when I can’t be bothered swimming across the river…

Me? Personally I favour the move to “onemanblogs.co.uk”, but please don’t let that sway the voting.

And yes, I am aware this will cost me visitors, but I’m long past the “how many people” stage, preferring to measure my site’s success in terms of quality of comment rather than the number of random google searches which bring people here, and on that front I can happily confirm that you are all doing a bang up job as the quality of comment here remains very high, despite the best efforts of hans and my Mum…

There’s no option for “I don’t mind” in the poll, so I’ll just say it here instead.

I don’t mind. I come here for the quality of writing (and comment), not the quality of the domain name

I’m not sure how well you’ll do at having gordonmclean.co.uk as the page where “if someone searches for me, theyâ€™ll land there first” though. I’ve just done a quick search for “Adrian McEwen” on google and couldn’t see http://www.mcqn.net in the first 100 results, whereas http://www.mcqn.net/mcfilter/ was the first hit.

But then I’ve never been trying to get the bare domain to rank higher, so more often than not provide my blog when a URL is required.

Oh arses, knew I’d forgotten something – for hosting, check out DreamHost – insane levels of bandwidth and storage for Not Much Cash.

I’ve been using them for some of my projects this year, with a couple more upcoming, and so far they’re bloody good. Only (minor) weirdness is the MySQL setup, which might require you to do a little bit of jiggery-pokery – the MySQL database server is in a different location, and you need to be able to edit the DB host as well as username/password. Caused me some hassle first time, but now it’s no problem at all.

It’s funny, when I get an idea like this I often wonder if it’s one of those “just me” ideas and that everyone else will think I’m bonkers. Good to know some of you lot are bonkers too.. yay.

Keep them votes coming, remember YOU DECIDE… (ok, not really, but this is fun!)

Adrian (Mc) – I’m not that bothered about the pagerank for this domain, but it does mean if someone guesses… “ohh gordon mclean.. wonder if he’s .co.uk or .com” then they at least get a starting point.

Lesley – that’s awful. I have .co.uk and .com, might look into .net and .orgs too!

As you know, I use the /weblog/ version, but like you that’s because I’d prefer if people google my name they find the ad for my book first rather than the weblog. Not that that works, the blog is still way higher on google.

BTW, having been the one to convert me to 34sp, I wouldn’t be so quick to move away. After the nightmare I experienced with Lycos, 34sp have been utterly reliable and I’m not risking going anywhere else.

I for one prefer the /blog idea. If you’re using the main domain as a “home” page, having the /blog linking off it only makes sense, seeing as you rarely, if ever, get as ranty or offensive as Mr “LyleD4D”.